New Spalding Club > Records of Invercauld MDXLVII - MDCCCXXVIII [1547- 1828]

ESTATE PAPERS: MIGVIE EASTER. 99
In Wester Micras, where there was quite a large hamlet, Robert
McHardy is rated at ;£'44, with his son, Charles, as tacksman ; John
Erskine at ;^i55, also with his son, John, as tacksman ; William
McDonald of Reinetton (Rineton), at ;^22 ; Edward Fleming of Auchin-
toule (Glengairn), as portioner, at £i6 ; and James Coutts, his brother-in-
law, also as portioner, at ^^'86. Thus the total rental of Wester Micras
amounted in 1696 to the sum of ^^323 Scots, which at that date had a
purchasing value not much short of tliat of Sterling money at the
present day.
In TORREGALTER (Torgalter) the only proprietor entered in the
Assessment Roll is David McKenzie, whose valuation is £$$. The
Morgans do not appear as proprietors, though it is certain they had not
divested themselves of their proprietory rights till 1713. Several persons
of the name, however, appear as tenants on this and the neighbouring
properties.
MIGVIE, EASTER (HOPEWELL).
This property, situated about a mile to the west of the Village of
Tarland, and in the lower or eastern end of the old Parish of Migvie, was
the most recent acquisition by the Invercauld family of land in the
district of Cromar.' The documents referred to in their collection of
writs relating to it do not therefore carry the proprietory history much
farther back than the beginning of the present century.
I MuiR OF Kynoch. There was a still more recent acquisition, though not by purchase,
of a portion of a moorland property called MuiR oi-' Kynoch. The tradition regarding it is as
follows : — A former proprietor of the name of Coutls, having for some reason — some say for his
share in the '45, but it must have been before that time — fled the country, and no one having
appeared to claim the deserted waste, it became a sort of ' no man's land.' It had long remained
so, plundered by the neighbouring farmers, who carried away its soil to enrich their own fields,
and quarrelled over its pasture ; worse still, strangers of very questionable character squatted upon
it and sorned upon the country around. At length, in 1S28, a petition was presented to the Sheriff
of the county to take measures to prevent the evils thus arising. A long legal process had to be
gone through before any eflectual scheme was adopted. In the end an arbiter was appointed —
Wm. Simpson, Esq., Advocate in Aberdeen — who went into all the matters submitted to him
with great minuteness, dividing the property (40 acres or thereby) among the three neighbouring
heritors — Mrs. Farquharson of Invercauld, Dr. Forbes of Blelack, and Francis Fatquharson of
Finzean, — according to the best of his judgment. A certified copy of his Decreet Arbitral, dated
1st June, 1838, is preserved among the Invercauld writs.